If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur

by Linda Bailey, Colin Jack (Illustrator)

Overview

If you happen to have a dinosaur, lying around your living room, and you don't know what to do with it ... why don't you use it as a can opener? It will make a terrific nutcracker too! There are oodles of uses for a dinosaur — from a fine umbrella to an excellent kite and a dandy pillow, not to mention a reliable burglar alarm and the perfect excuse to forget your homework. This delightfully absurd exploration of the domestic uses of dinosaurs — and the things dinos just aren't good for at all — is guaranteed to tickle funny bones and spark imaginations. If you read carefully, you'll learn how to make your dinosaur last a very long time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770495685
Publisher:	Tundra
Publication date:	05/13/2014
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	411,486
Product dimensions:	10.70(w) x 10.70(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

LINDA BAILEY has written nearly forty books for children, including The Three Little Mittens, Carson Crosses Canada, Princesses Versus Dinosaurs and If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur. Her books have been translated into twenty languages and have won multiple awards such as the Ontario Blue Spruce and Silver Birch Awards, the California Young Reader Medal, the Georgia Children's Picturebook Award and the UK School Library Association Information Book Award. Linda has been honored for her exceptional body of work in children’s literature with the Vicky Metcalf Award. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia where she has had some stupendous sleepovers with her grandchildren.

COLIN JACK is the incredibly talented illustrator of several books for children including the Galaxy Zack series, Toads on Toast and 1 Zany Zoo. He also works as a story artist and character designer at Dreamworks, and has been involved in such productions as Hotel Transylvania, Grossology and Ed, Edd n Eddy.

Editorial Reviews

SELECTION - Today’s Parent’s list of Top 15 Picture Books, 2014

PRAISE FOR If You Happen to Have a Dinosaur:

"It’s bright and breezy." —Kirkus Reviews

"Buried in all the rambunctious fun, the story leaves young ones with a message that can be applied to real-life situations: if you take the time to think critically and creatively, you can make effective and logical choices." —Booklist

"There aren’t many books that have the courage to be this silly . . . Simply wonderful." —Globe and Mail

From the Publisher

2014-03-31
A tongue-in-cheek look at some of the many ways that idle household dinosaurs can be put to work. Jack casts a host of cartoon dinosaurs—most of them humongous, nearly all smiling and candy bright of hue—in roles as can openers, potato mashers, yard sweepers, umbrellas on rainy days, snowplows, garbage collectors, and like helpers or labor savers. Even babysitters, though, as Bailey aptly notes, "not all dinosaurs are suited to this work." Still, "[t]he possibilities are amazing!" And even if there aren't any handy dinos around, she concludes, any live-in octopus, sasquatch, kangaroo or other creature can be likewise exploited. A bespectacled, woolly-haired boy who looks rather a lot like Weird Al Yankovic serves as dino-wrangler in chief, heading up a multiethnic cast of kids who enjoy the dinosaurs' services. As with all books of this ilk, the humor depends on subtextual visual irony. A group of kids happily flying pterosaur kites sets up a gag featuring a little boy holding a limp string tied to the tail of a grumpy-looking stegosaurus. Changes on this premise have been run over and over since Bernard Most's If the Dinosaurs Came Back (1978), and though this iteration doesn't have any fresh twists to offer, at least it's bright and breezy enough to ward off staleness. Well-trodden dino turf, but the grass is still fairly green. (Picture book. 4-6)

Kirkus Reviews